


love me dead

by scrapbullet



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-04
Updated: 2010-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/pseuds/scrapbullet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; Edgar Allan Poe</p>
            </blockquote>





	love me dead

Moonlight throws dancing shadows across her face, as pale as alabaster. The delicate veins beneath the thin veneer of flesh is faint and blue, webbing and weaving through bird-like limbs before falling into the deep recesses of her body as if they never were.

She is dead.

And this? This isn’t real; this cage, this _prison_ for a shade of a person that once was and never will be again. A cage built from the bricks and mortar of thoughts and memories, of bars made of the slick silver of the knife she’d wielded, the knife he’d taken from her grasp with trembling hands.

( _and it plays before his eyes with perfect, searing clarity; a moment in time repeated, a loop that folds in on itself, in and around and never ends._ )

Beneath him, her pregnant belly resonates with a life that shall never come to pass. Here, in this dream, he rests the rough palm of his hand upon the swell and waits for the slow, languid movement of a life beneath; but there is nothing. In truth Ariadne hadn’t been this far along when she’d died, and he hadn’t even known until the autopsy report had made its way into his briefcase.

Would it have been a boy, or a girl?

She stirs, eyelashes fluttering. In his arms, in their bed, her body is as broken as her mind, the fragile bones of her legs shattered beyond repair, blood tacky between his fingers. She’d jumped, _his precious Ariadne_ , just like Mal did, and in essence it is the ultimate betrayal.

His mind had been irreparable when they’d met. She’d fixed him, stitched him back together with deft hands and a quick smile.

Love; yes, he’d grown to love her.

But in the end she had been just as damaged as he, contaminated by his very touch and presence.

Ariadne stirs, and her eyes meet his. Her hands, so small and slender, touch his arm, his chest, his _face_ , and her kisses are as warm and sweet as the honey she would stir in her tea on a cold, winter morning.

“ _I’m sorry,_ ” Cobb says, and he palms the gun, presses the barrel to her temple. She only looks at him with pity in her eyes, one hand pressed against her swollen belly, and smiles.

He pulls the trigger.


End file.
